Lithuanian Firm Seeks LNG for Terminal Testing

Lithuania will seek to buy up to 170,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNGLF) on a spot basis to test its LNG import terminal, which is expected to come online in December, the company in charge of the project said on Thursday.

Klaipedos Nafta (XIC.F) has signed a 10-year agreement with Norway's Hoegh LNG to lease a floating gas storage and regasification vessel, which will serve as an import terminal at the Baltic Sea port city of Klaipeda.

Majority state-owned Klaipedos Nafta said in the agenda for its July 3 shareholder meeting that it expects to pay up to 112 million litas ($44 million) for the test LNG shipment.

Litgas, the gas trading arm of Lithuanian energy group Lietuvos Energija, plans to sign a five-year deal with Norway's Statoil (STO) to import 0.54 billion cubic meters (bcm) a year from 2015.

The value of the Statoil deal has not been disclosed, but officials said the price should be higher than the $370 per 1,000 cubic meters paid for Russian pipeline gas after Gazprom agreed to a 20 percent price cut in May.

Analysts said plans to import LNG helped Lithuania to win the discount, but the new price for Russian gas is valid only until the end of 2015, when the current long-term supply contract expires.

Lithuania consumed 2.7 bcm of natural gas in 2013, down from 3.3 bcm the previous year, with more than a third of the gas consumed by the country's nitrogen fertilizers producer Achema. ($1 = 2.5441 Lithuanian Litas)

Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis